


Five Scenes: Augustine Sycamore

by orphan_account



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Spoilers, headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all he may appear goofy and harmless, Sycamore is quite the chessmaster. Four scenes leading up to the events of Pokemon X and Y, and one set during the story.</p><p>Rated Teen for references to smoking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Scenes: Augustine Sycamore

~1~

When Professor Sycamore is stressed, he lights up a cigarette. It’s an old habit, and one he knows he shouldn’t indulge. It started in his student days: someone offered him a smoke one night outside a club. At first, it was purely social – everyone else did it. After a while, though, he started to notice he would get agitated without it. It wasn’t just the nicotine, either – it was the movement of his hands, the manner of breathing that smoking required. All of these worked together to make it easy to fall into the habit – and very hard to break.

Sycamore decided to quit after becoming a teacher. One day, Lysandre – a much younger Lysandre, a student at that point, but still just as passionate and charismatic -- caught him lighting up after class. Lysandre had lectured Sycamore about it, told him that such a habit wasn’t worthy of such a great mind. Sycamore had been embarrassed and sheepishly laughed it off at the time – but a few days later, after thinking it over, he replaced the cigarettes with nicotine patches. Now and then, Sycamore could be seen gesturing with his pen the same way he might with a cigarette, occasionally sucking the end, until it was pointed out to him.

He tried using candy to keep himself from chewing the ends of his pens, but the sugar didn’t help him much either, instead making him more inclined to want to smoke once the sugar rush wore off.

Nowadays, he takes comfort in the feel of a hot cup of decaffeinated coffee in his hands (he swore off caffeine as well, for the same reasons as sugar). But now and then, when everything is making him on edge and he just can’t think – he heads outside to the back garden of the lab, and lights up. It just helps – although usually he ends up regretting it when he starts wheezing afterwards.

~2~

Lysandre’s work with the Holocaster and other technologies had been phenomenal. It had made communication easier for researchers in the Kalos region. Being a graduate of Sycamore’s tutelage, Lysandre had donated vast sums derived from sales of this technology, in order that Sycamore’s own work and research would flourish.

It all went sour when Team Flare happened. At first, Sycamore had overlooked the whole situation – Lysandre was his former student, surely he wouldn’t hold for such nonsense as that which was happening?

Eventually, it got to the point where Sycamore was starting to worry about Lysandre. The man who had been his student was… somewhat more incendiary in his remarks and attitude, cynical and cutting, rather than the optimistic-if-earnest Lysandre that Sycamore remembered. When Sycamore called Lysandre to his office, Lysandre had merely rebuffed him – and asked pointedly if Sycamore would risk his research by opposing him?

Sycamore had many a sleepless night after that, fearing partly for the safety of the lab, and his employees – but also for his own safety. He feared for Lysandre, too. How could things have gone so horribly wrong for his former student?

~3~

A few months down the line, Sycamore was invited to a conference in Sinnoh. Having spent some time studying there with Professor Rowan in his younger years, Sycamore gladly accepted the invite.

A silver haired man spoke at the conference, detailing his research into mega stones and mega evolution. Professor Juniper from the Unova region had brought her own assistant, a young lady named Bianca, to the conference. They had given a rather colourful presentation about abilities found in Unova’s Pokemon, particularly pertaining to those from the dream world.

According to the gossip at the conference, the various regions had had their own dealings with cults of various types. From these conversations, Sycamore started to slowly formulate his own plan to fight back against Team Flare -- and Lysandre -- without appearing to be involved at all.

In a late night chat with two of his graduate students, Sina and Dexio, he planted the seeds of crafting a Pokedex. They took the idea and ran with it. By the time Sycamore returned home from Sinnoh, the pair had initial concept designs and ideas sitting on his desk.

~4~

Over several months, Sycamore worked with Sina and Dexio, refining these concepts and ideas, building prototypes. It would need to be simple enough for younger students to use without needing a manual. It needed a camera for taking pictures. A means of entering text and numbers.

Sycamore tested each prototype on four of the students from his placement classes. They dutifully reported back, enabling the final version to be polished in time for the summer break.

The day before end of term, Sycamore had been notified that one more would be joining the class the following term: the very daughter of the Rhyhorn Racer Grace. Surely such a child would be a natural with Pokemon. It also followed that inclusion in the project would mean this girl would get on better in class the next term.

Five final versions of the Pokedex were made for each of the students. Five letters written for their parents. Five rare Pokemon bred to help them along in their research. Five more were given to Sycamore by a visiting Professor Oak.

It would only take a few nudges to send his students in the right direction.

~5~

Sycamore never quite imagined the scale of what his students would uncover. The truth of Team Flare had been terrifying: hefty donations simply to join the group; membership of the group supposedly being the only means of avoiding what would surely be an apocalyptic event; a legendary Pokemon trapped in the heart of their lair; an ancient weapon revived and primed, ready to use.

Lacking the power of this legendary beast, the weapon imploded, burying Team Flare’s base – and Lysandre with it. Nobody was quite certain if he had survived.

Sycamore felt sick to his stomach when Sina and Dexio called him to fill him in. His former student, stopped, but at a cost. There was the matter of the effects of the radiation on the young students who had ended it all, and on the local habitat of Geosenge and its surroundings.

For the first time in months, Sycamore lit up a cigarette, and stood in silence in the lab’s back garden. The breathing calmed his racing pulse, the nicotine settling his nerves, the actions soothing his spirit.

Sycamore found that he needed to know his students hadn’t gotten by on blind luck. He needed to apologize for making them bear this task. He needed… to face them. With his mind made up, he packed a group of Pokemon, and set out to meet up with his students, and battle them for himself. Only in doing so could he redeem himself, he felt. Only in doing so could he make sure that everything would be all right.

In the end, each of his students granted Sycamore the thrashing and defeat that he felt he sorely deserved.

**END**


End file.
